Liquid Emulsion - do it your selfers

Dan Dozer · Dec 11, 2020

Foma liquid emulsion is getting kind of expensive and I've been considering trying to make it myself. The process doesn't look all that simple with the chopping up the resin and melting and such. For those of you out there that have done it, did it go OK for you and which "recipe" did you use? There are several different ones listed in the two books I have.

ThePhotoChemist · Dec 11, 2020

This is the guide I typically recommend to people as a starting point for making emulsions. It's pretty simple and straightforward. And much like the guide suggests, I used to use all second hand kitchen equipment to make it.

http://www.thelightfarm.com/Map/DryPlate/Osterman/DryPlatePart4.htm

If you can pick up a cheap magnetic stirrer, or even better, a heater stirrer combo it makes life a lot easier.

It looks complicated at first, but it's all pretty simple once you go through it. Melt some gelatin, mix a couple of halogen salts together with some silver nitrate to make silver halides. Chill the emulsion, shred into chunks and wash it a bunch to remove all the junk we don't want. Heat it back up, add a couple more things, and then pour it on some glass.

removed account4 · Dec 11, 2020

hi dan

I use Chris Paten's recipe for sea water emulsion.
http://thelightfarm.com/Map/DryPlate/Patton/DryPlatePart.htm
I have been using that recipe for more than 2 years. it takes ma about 20 minutes to make it. the thing that takes all the time, and effort is drizzling the silver nitrate in the sea water/gelatin while mixing the gelatin.... Since I don't use it on glass but on paper I skip noodling and washing. Its a great recipe...

Good luck !
John

grainyvision · Dec 13, 2020

I've done it. Making the emulsion is quite a bit of waiting around and requires a bit of space and equipment (magnetic stirrer/hot plate combo!), but relatively easy. The hard part is coating!

Note that homemade emulsions, unless you can source something hard to find like PMT will not be stabilized and even in the fridge will turn foggy over time. If fridged before digestion and finals, then it'll last apparently a few months, but if fridged afterwards (ie, "ready to use") then it'll likely work for a few days at best.

ThePhotoChemist · Dec 13, 2020

earlz said:
I've done it. Making the emulsion is quite a bit of waiting around and requires a bit of space and equipment (magnetic stirrer/hot plate combo!), but relatively easy. The hard part is coating!

Note that homemade emulsions, unless you can source something hard to find like PMT will not be stabilized and even in the fridge will turn foggy over time. If fridged before digestion and finals, then it'll last apparently a few months, but if fridged afterwards (ie, "ready to use") then it'll likely work for a few days at best.

Uhh, what's your source on that? I've chilled and reheated completed beaker of emulsion over and over for up to 3 months with no noticeable problems at all. Definitely no issues at all after just a few days.

removed account4 · Dec 13, 2020

ThePhotoChemist said:
Uhh, what's your source on that? I've chilled and reheated completed beaker of emulsion over and over for up to 3 months with no noticeable problems at all. Definitely no issues at all after just a few days.

same here. I used stuff I made for 6 months with no issue ...

grainyvision · Dec 13, 2020

ThePhotoChemist said:
Uhh, what's your source on that? I've chilled and reheated completed beaker of emulsion over and over for up to 3 months with no noticeable problems at all. Definitely no issues at all after just a few days.

There's some old PE posts mentioning it, and knowing the chemistry itself, every reheat cycle will cause larger grain and more opportunity for fog. I've experienced this myself with a simple chloride paper emulsion. Second coating I did with the batch had a small amount of base fog. Maybe that was a difference with washed vs unwashed though. In my case it was an unwashed emulsion. What kind of emulsion did you do this with?

removedacct1 · Dec 14, 2020

Has anyone used Liquid Light emulsion on glass to make "dry plate" negatives?

ThePhotoChemist · Dec 14, 2020

earlz said:
There's some old PE posts mentioning it, and knowing the chemistry itself, every reheat cycle will cause larger grain and more opportunity for fog. I've experienced this myself with a simple chloride paper emulsion. Second coating I did with the batch had a small amount of base fog. Maybe that was a difference with washed vs unwashed though. In my case it was an unwashed emulsion. What kind of emulsion did you do this with?

I'd be super interested in these posts if you can find them. I'm well aware that reheating an emulsion will always cause a bit of fog, but your original claim was that if you refrigerate an emulsion after digestion/finals it'll just go bad in a few days. Maybe it's different for unwashed emulsions, but in my experience with washed emulsions this is simply untrue.

Here PE mentions he has kept unwashed emulsions for up to 6 months, but to be fair he doesn't say whether this was before digestion/finals.

paulbarden said:
Has anyone used Liquid Light emulsion on glass to make "dry plate" negatives?

You might try the search function, this has been covered in a lot of threads.

removed account4 · Dec 14, 2020

earlz said:
There's some old PE posts mentioning it, and knowing the chemistry itself, every reheat cycle will cause larger grain and more opportunity for fog. I've experienced this myself with a simple chloride paper emulsion. Second coating I did with the batch had a small amount of base fog. Maybe that was a difference with washed vs unwashed though. In my case it was an unwashed emulsion. What kind of emulsion did you do this with?

Yea this is true the more you melt the stuff the more apt it is to fog. I never had this problem even with bottled stuff that I'd melt the whole bottle and pour some out ( before I knew any better ). ...now even with bottled stuff if I use it I squeeze some out and melt small bits, wide mouth containers ( like foma ) I use a spoon and scoop it out. If you are putting the emulsion on paper you don't need to wash it because it gets washed when you put the print in the chemicals + water processing it. On glass or metal its a different story. I don't wash any of my emulsions anymore since I put them on paper.

paulbarden said:
Has anyone used Liquid Light emulsion on glass to make "dry plate" negatives?

hi paulbarden
until 2 or 3 (?) years ago when I started making my own again I did a lot of that. Self taught in the mid 1980s .. was a lot of fun. It is pretty expensive as bottled emulsions go. Sometimes Freestyle has expired foma emulsion and its cheep and good
John

Wayne · Dec 14, 2020

paulbarden said:
Has anyone used Liquid Light emulsion on glass to make "dry plate" negatives?

I made a few. John is the expert at it

removedacct1 · Dec 14, 2020

jnantz said:
hi paulbarden
until 2 or 3 (?) years ago when I started making my own again I did a lot of that. Self taught in the mid 1980s .. was a lot of fun. It is pretty expensive as bottled emulsions go. Sometimes Freestyle has expired foma emulsion and its cheep and good
John

I looked at the Foma emulsion at Freestyle yesterday and the $72 price tag made me wince. That's more than I care to spend right now on such a project.

removed account4 · Dec 14, 2020

keep your eyes on it cause it goes for 35$ when its on clearance ( 2KG container ).

Nodda Duma · Dec 15, 2020

paulbarden said:
Has anyone used Liquid Light emulsion on glass to make "dry plate" negatives?

Paul if you're going to use Liquid Light, grind a bevel on the edges of your glass and then clean the glass very well. Otherwise the emulsion will lift / frill / float away in your developing bath. In fact, for any emulsion on glass, the key is roughing up the edge and cleaning thoroughly. There's a few guides here and there. My go-to is ultrasonic bath with a distilled water / Alcojet mix (but I'm running hundreds of plates through that a week).

For hand-washing a few plates, I use water, dish soap, sprinkled with rottenstone to make a gray soap slurry. Use a sponge and lots of elbow grease, then rinse thoroughly. The water should sheet off without forming droplets. Dip in distilled water to avoid hard water residue and set in a rack (vertically) to dry.

If you have higher tap water temps or can't keep consistent temperatures, after dipping in distilled water, dip in a subbing solution of 2% gelatin and 1% chrome alum. Pour the newly-mixed solution through a gold mesh coffee filter into a container to dip the plates in. Dip, then set vertically to dry. Once dry you can coat. Discard the subbing solution after 3 days.

One more thing: Liquid Light is uselessly thick for coating onto glass. My guess is that it's 8-10% gelatin. I highly recommend diluting (with distilled water) down to 6%. That's a much better working concentration, especially starting out. To coat: You can pour and tilt if you'd like, or use a syringe to coat ~ 0.25 ml emulsion per square inch of glass surface, then spread with a glass rod spreader.

- Jason

removedacct1 · Dec 15, 2020

Nodda Duma said:
Paul if you're going to use Liquid Light, grind a bevel on the edges of your glass and then clean the glass very well. Otherwise the emulsion will lift / frill / float away in your developing bath. In fact, for any emulsion on glass, the key is roughing up the edge and cleaning thoroughly. There's a few guides here and there. My go-to is ultrasonic bath with a distilled water / Alcojet mix (but I'm running hundreds of plates through that a week).

For hand-washing a few plates, I use water, dish soap, sprinkled with rottenstone to make a gray soap slurry. Use a sponge and lots of elbow grease, then rinse thoroughly. The water should sheet off without forming droplets. Dip in distilled water to avoid hard water residue and set in a rack (vertically) to dry.

If you have higher tap water temps or can't keep consistent temperatures, after dipping in distilled water, dip in a subbing solution of 2% gelatin and 1% chrome alum. Pour the newly-mixed solution through a gold mesh coffee filter into a container to dip the plates in. Dip, then set vertically to dry. Once dry you can coat. Discard the subbing solution after 3 days.

One more thing: Liquid Light is uselessly thick for coating onto glass. My guess is that it's 8-10% gelatin. I highly recommend diluting (with distilled water) down to 6%. That's a much better working concentration, especially starting out. To coat: You can pour and tilt if you'd like, or use a syringe to coat ~ 0.25 ml emulsion per square inch of glass surface, then spread with a glass rod spreader.

- Jason

Thanks for that info, Jason. It sounds like Liquid Light is ill-suited to making glass negatives, so I think I'll skip it. It seems the Foma emulsion is a better choice.

Nodda Duma · Dec 15, 2020

paulbarden said:
Thanks for that info, Jason. It sounds like Liquid Light is ill-suited to making glass negatives, so I think I'll skip it. It seems the Foma emulsion is a better choice.

Right. Liquid Light seemed set up for coating non-glass things where you want it to go on thick and set quickly. It’s also a silver chloride emulsion

removed account4 · Dec 15, 2020

Wayne said:
I made a few. John is the expert at it

Thanks Wayne !
While I've made a bunch of them from 35mm size to 11x14 I'm more of a hack who doesn't care about perfection compared to Jason who makes and sells hundreds ( if not thousands ) of plates and has a great system. I'd take his advice over mine any day .. unless of course you are into wabi-sabi

That said, I never found trouble it RC stuff being too thick ( ignorance is bliss )
when I called RC they told me it was a chlorobromide emulsion. maybe that was AG+ they were talking about ?
no clue . (again ignorance is bliss ) ... that all said I've probably coated about 3 gallons of glass plates using RC emulsion I used both their bottom of the line stuff as well as their AG+ and VC glop. never really had troubles using it
other than user error when I didn't know to put the plates on a very cold surface to set it up. or way earlier when I didn't use a binder ( like Jason's suggestion of gelatin and hardener ). so the emulsion lifted off the plates in the fixer and did that emulsion lift drain swirl thing ... once I learned the subbing trick and then 20+ years later after wildbillbugman blew my mind about the cold stone ... never had that emulsion lift issue again. ... not saying any of my dry plates look like great, perfectly coated dry plates but I still get negatives ( and have fun )
have a great holiday !
John

Nodda Duma · Dec 15, 2020

I’m well into the tens of thousands of plates coated, I’m happy to say. Hit that the first year, and probably approaching 50,000 plates coated by now. Not all by me for the past couple of years, though.. I employ a few local high schoolers who do most of the prepping/coating now. My primary coater has been doing this since she was 14, and is faster / better than me .. her plates often look machine-made. She’ll be a senior next year.

blockend · Dec 16, 2020

I'm inspired to make my own emulsion again. I used Liquid Light years ago and got good results, time to pull out the recipe book.

Dan Dozer · Dec 17, 2020

Thanks for all the great advice and info. I do have a new canister of Foma that I'll be using. There is still a little left in the old can, but it seems to come out with a cream tint to it after coating. Perhaps it isn't holding up well the being re-heated a few times. I'll be trying making my own after the Foma is gone.

BTW - I'm doing liquid emulsion colored bromoils and really enjoying it.

nmp · Dec 17, 2020

jnantz said:
hi dan

I use Chris Paten's recipe for sea water emulsion.
http://thelightfarm.com/Map/DryPlate/Patton/DryPlatePart.htm
I have been using that recipe for more than 2 years. it takes ma about 20 minutes to make it. the thing that takes all the time, and effort is drizzling the silver nitrate in the sea water/gelatin while mixing the gelatin.... Since I don't use it on glass but on paper I skip noodling and washing. Its a great recipe...

Good luck !
John

Hi, John:

A question: So what is the difference whether you wash the emulsion or not. What exactly is supposed to be washed out from the emulsion - excess salts? Silver nitrate? Noodle washing seems to be the most cumbersome part of the process.

:Niranjan.

removed account4 · Dec 17, 2020

Hey Niranjan:
I'm probably not the person to be answering this question. LOL because I barely know the chemistry/reactions behind all these things .. but from my foggy understanding of these things, when you wash the noodles you are washing out the excess salt that didn't bind with the silver to created the light sensitive organic that triggers the silver to be light sensitive ( silver nitrate is not sensitive to light as it is, it needs an organic material to be a trigger ). For me, once I was told since I was putting it on paper ( and because the paper is porous and could be saturated with water to flush out the salts ) I didn't need to wash, I opted not to wash. ... seeing if you over wash there is chance of fogging the emulsion so I'd rather not do that .. if I was coating glass like Jason does, I'd have no choice, but I'm least effort on paper so I take the ez way out.
I hope if I'm wrong about what washes out someone with more knowledge about the whole process corrects my mis-information!
John

mshchem · Dec 17, 2020

I made a bromide emulsion years ago. I found it to be quite easy. I used a food gelatin available here in the USA, Knox unflavored gelatin. Did a quick calculation added silver nitrate and potassium bromide. Got a beautiful white suspension, I had roughly 500mL, put it in a jar, into a black bag. Set this in a refrigerator for several hours to set up. To wash the gelatin I used a tall Paterson tank, fastened cloth around the tank and the center column. I chopped up the cold gelatin (a potato ricer would be my choice today) put the cold jello into my washer, ran COLD tap water down the center column, the cloth acted as a filter that kept the gelatin in place.
After washing, I placed the washed gelatin in a brown glass jar, and ripened it overnight in a small gravity convection oven blacked out.
Coated some paper the next day worked great.
All I can say is as long as Ilford keeps making the Art 300 I'm out of the paper business
It was a blast and a very simple process until I had to coat the paper. I floated the paper, not the way to do it. It works, and I'm sure I could figure it out. Drying cutting etc. Is another story.

mshchem · Dec 17, 2020

jnantz said:
Hey Niranjan:
I'm probably not the person to be answering this question. LOL because I barely know the chemistry/reactions behind all these things .. but from my foggy understanding of these things, when you wash the noodles you are washing out the excess salt that didn't bind with the silver to created the light sensitive organic that triggers the silver to be light sensitive ( silver nitrate is not sensitive to light as it is, it needs an organic material to be a trigger ). For me, once I was told since I was putting it on paper ( and because the paper is porous and could be saturated with water to flush out the salts ) I didn't need to wash, I opted not to wash. ... seeing if you over wash there is chance of fogging the emulsion so I'd rather not do that .. if I was coating glass like Jason does, I'd have no choice, but I'm least effort on paper so I take the ez way out.
I hope if I'm wrong about what washes out someone with more knowledge about the whole process corrects my mis-information!
John

AgNO3 + KCL ------> KNO3 + AgCl the cold water doesn't dissolve the gelatin but rinses away the potassium nitrate or any remaining potassium chloride. You can use salt or potassium bromide or iodide depending on how fast you want your product to be. Lack of sensitizing compounds allows you to work under safelights.

mshchem · Dec 17, 2020

Silver nitrate is super easy to make. But the fumes are a deadly, corrosive nightmare. I've done it at home once, got beautiful needle like crystals, major pain. If you had access to a real laboratory, like I did 30 years ago, it would be easy peezee!

Liquid Emulsion - do it your selfers

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